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Spy Satellites? What Spy Satellites?
mutantcamel writes: "This story at Yahoo says that the actual orbits of US spy satellites are not the same as the ones that the UN thinks that they are. The errors include a launch of a
satellite that was never registered, and only two of the last ten satellites have been correctly registered. The errors are bound to cast doubts on what will really happen with the Son of Star Wars programme." Heh, "errors".
On the other hand, since it lets us know its bias straight-off, we can dismiss it without having to wade through the crap that follows.
Look Mr Harvard-Liberal-Academic-Kennedy-Wannabe, we all know you hate Bush. But are you really that naive to think that any nation capable of putting a satellite in space wouldn't be able to make the same kinds of observations you did? I have a feeling most nations understand that spy satellites are, well, for spying, and that unless they want to start a war they'll let us have ours and we let them have theirs. The U.S. Space Command is more than capable of keeping track of all man-made satellites in earth-orbit, so arguments about collisions are irrelevant. And the fact is that the treaty says that contents of each country's satellite registry is comnpletely up to that country, so the U.S. is not in violation of the treaty.The only way I can explain this article is that this "respected space analyst" is either extremely arrogant and naive, or (more likely) an anti-Bush liberal democrat. The other thing to remember is that New Scientist is based in Europe (in G.B. I believe), and to fill a weekly magazine with "cutting-edge scientific journalism" they have to choose a few dodgy topics as filler, the more controversial, the better.
The real unitron has Slashdot ID 5733, and needs to change his sig.
First, the choice of orbit isn't random; some orbits are better than others (land or sea coverage springs to mind). These orbits will tend to crowd faster than others (there is a real shortage of geostationary orbits by now, for example). Second, they'd be circling in similar orbits for years.
:-) ), and toss marbles. This time, however, we toss them in similar directions. Also, we do another toss about every fifty minutes for the next ten years (or around 100.000 times).
OK, let's stand on random point on a cricket field (though I'd prefer an icehockey rink, but whatever
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
These aren't the satellites you're looking for. Move along.
spoo
Satellite nerd: OK sir, we're ready to register the exact position of this here spy satellite with the UN.
Colonel Korn: (twirls moustache) That's top secret info. Classify it and "spill coffee" all over the UN paperwork.
Satellite Nerd: But you realize that any third grader with binoculars will instantly find out? How can we keep the brightest thing in the sky secret?
Colonel Korn: Hmf. Well, it'll at least be secret from all the second graders, and thats enough for me! Make it so!
Maybe you'll get lucky and see the NOSS satellites, there are 3 flying in formation. I've only seen them twice.
SuperID
Geez...I know this is Slashdot and all...but PERL Harbor? What the hell? Come up for air now and then...can't think code all the time.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
And clueless slashdot posters... Spy sats change their orbits from time to time. These changes are obviously made to support a particular observational project. It would be foolish to routinely publish this information, as it can give away the goal or target the change was made for. This is called operational data, and its classified, hence not released to the public.
Let's use an example... Say we're monitoring Iraq's ballistic missile development. They've bought orbital intel from the Chinese or Russians or whomever, on American and British spy-sats. They know when they're overhead, and can plan their activities accordingly. When the spy-sats are overhead, they park mobile launchers in hangars, keep everyone indoors, and generally try and make a place look uninteresting. So, in order to avoid this rouse a subtle change in the orbit of a spy-sat might be made, to invalidate their intel over a period of time and increase the odds of catching them off gaurd. A larger change might be made to bring a close pass in range of the cameras/radars within an orbit or two, in order to catch some interesting event.
The end result is, whatever orbit data is available on the spy-sats, it's virtually always out of date. It's intentional, and actually a requirement for the spy-sats to get their job done. Get over it.
To be honest, I'm really shocked at the amount of Euro "anti-american" crap flying around here. We share much of this data with your countries. The people in the UN complaining about this are the third-world represenatives who's countries can't track the spy-sats themselves, and are sick of having their own imperialist tendancies thwarted by the bigger more advanced nations. Much of the world didn't learn the lessons of WW1 and WW2. This is one of those cases where they can't be allowed to learn them the hard way, no matter how much they complain.
Temkin
Using the words of George Carlin: "how can it be a spy satellite, when on the news they say it's a spy satellite?" The point being, of course, that spy satellites naturally are supposed to spy on people, and it's not very productive to spy on people if they know exactly where you are and what you are seeing. So, of course the owner of a spy satellite will try to conceal it's whereabouts. In case of war, shooting down a satellite you know where is is also a hell of alot easier than if you didn't know.
If you still think the US are evil here, think about how successfull a real, human spy would be if he walked around with a big sign saying "I'm a spy!" That wouldn't work very well, now would it? In fact, it would simply be silly, not to say stupid, right? It's the same thing with satellites (of course not completely, but the analogy is sound).
If anyone is worried about bias, I'm Danish, not American.
Bjarke Roune
"It's silly. These things are among the brightest objects in the sky," says John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington-based policy group. He says the Pentagon has grown arrogant, believing "we won the cold war, we can do whatever we want".
The brightest objects in the sky, even with all the light pollution? Seriously, I've never seen a satellite other than SkyLab. And then, only because everybody in the neighborhood knew when it was to fly by!
Those things don't need navigation lights or bright colors. I'm afraid, Mr. Pike, that the Pentagon can do anything they want in this matter.
-- sigs are like parking spaces - all the good ones are occupied